"Bravo, bravo!" Her lips parted mockingly over her white teeth as she pretended to applaud madly. It was the daintiest teasing, and more charming in the intimacy it implied than any downright praise. Adair glowed with a pleasure so honest and boyish that Phyllis might be forgiven for not suspecting the baser depths he hid so well.
"I'm a conceited ass," he admitted, "and after all, isn't it enough to turn a man's head to be here with you, and feel I owe it to the ginger I put into Corrèze? Most people get their friends by introductions and all that, but I just snatched you out of a whole theater full of strangers. For you are my friend, aren't you, Miss Ladd?"
"Yes, Corrèze."
"You'll be making me jealous of the chap," he cried running his hands through his hair with make-believe exasperation. "I think he is a good deal of a whining humbug myself, and the sly way he throws bouquets at himself is disgusting. Miss Ladd, I am ever so much nicer than he is--really I am--though I see I shall never be able to convince you."
"No reason why you shouldn't try."
"Perhaps I am ashamed to," he returned, with an intensity of expression that became him well. "You find me in a wretched little theater, the cheapest of cheap stars--the hoodlum's pet, the shop-girl's dream--and how can it help coloring your whole idea of me? You admire my Corrèze, but for me myself how can you have anything but contempt? No, no--listen--it's true--and the more you knew of my history the more contemptuous you'd be. I've been rated very high; I've had every chance in the world; I've played with the biggest kind of people, and--succeeded. Yet I have always been the dog who hanged himself. No, there is no mystery about it--there never is with a man who is sinking--a man of ability. It's his own fault every time--every, every time."
His earnestness made Phyllis thrill. Adair was playing his best rôle--himself, and playing it with the fire and eloquence he could always bring to it. His voice, incomparable in the beauty and range of its tones, was never so effective as when tinged with emotion. Nothing was more manly, more sincere, more moving. It rose and fell in cadences that lingered in the ear after the words themselves were spoken--veritable music, affecting not only the listener, but the musician as well. Under the spell of it he now found himself tempted into strange confidences. Never before had he spoken of his childhood and early life except to lie, to brag, to romance. Yet here, to his own wonder, and impelled by he hardly knew what, he was unbosoming himself of the whole ignoble truth. That instinct of his, so often wiser than himself, so diabolically helpful, was showing him the right road. Had Phyllis been some little milliner this would have been no road at all; such a one would have been too familiar with the seamy side of life to find any glamour in the tale; such a one would have preferred the bogus palaces and bogus splendors his instinct would then have indicated. Phyllis' intelligence was too keen thus to be deceived; even genuine splendors would have interested her less than this pitiful story of the slums; it not only touched her sensibility to the quick, but enhanced Adair in her tender and sympathetic eyes.
His father had been an Englishman--a remittance man named Mayne--George Cyril Augustus Fitzroy Mayne. Whether his pretensions were justified or not, and they were inordinate, including "Wales" and "Cambridge," he was beyond all doubt a gentleman, with grand manners, a back like a ramrod, and a curt, military directness in speaking. He used to say "dammy"; was fond of alluding to himself as "an old Hussar"; was wont to remark that a gentleman could always be told by his hat and his boots; and once, when attacked on the street, had shown extraordinary courage and adroitness in defending himself with a light cane. This was about all Adair remembered of him, except that he drank hard; had recurring fits of delirium tremens in which he raged and fought like a wild beast; and finally, dying in a hospital ward, was buried like a dog in the Potter's Field.
Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl. She was kind and warm-hearted, and spoke with a brogue; she was always laughing and singing, even under circumstances when a right-minded person would have thrown himself into the East River. She drank, too. Everybody drank. He used to be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was to be tipsy before he was eight. It was about that time he began to sell papers on the streets, for his father was dead, and his mother-- Well, he wouldn't go into that. But in her way she had always been good to him. She wouldn't let the men beat him. When she was sent to the Island for the second time he thought his little heart would break. She didn't last long after that. How could she, gone as she was in consumption, and drinking like a fish? Oh, what a hell it was--what a hell! His pennies were all his own now, though he often had to fight to keep them. He was always fighting to keep them--first in desperation, then by degrees with some coolness and science. The bigger boys coached him; egged him on; he became a regular little bantam. They'd make up a purse--a quarter or something--and set two little wretches to pounding each other. Anything was allowed, you know--biting, kicking, scrooging, hair pulling! There was only one rule, and that was to win.
Well, so it went on, till he was sixteen or thereabouts, the toughest young tough you could see on Avenue A. He was nicknamed Fighting Joe, and they used to get up cheap little matches for him in the back rooms of saloons--real fighting, stripped to the waist, and four ounce gloves. His only ambition was to get into the prize ring, and in his dreams at night he would see his picture in the Police Gazette. Then the Settlement workers came--a pale-looking outfit, with Mission furniture and leaflets. They were regarded as a great infliction--as an insult to an honest tough neighborhood. It was the correct thing to break their windows, and lambast their followers. Fighting Joe took a prominent part in this righteous task. What did it matter that several of them were women? What did such brutes care for that? If ever there was a young savage on earth it was he.